The present invention relates to data processing by digital computer, and more particularly to input in enterprise software applications.
An input field is one of the most commonly used user interface (UI) controls in form-based software applications, such as enterprise business applications. A UI input field typically includes a field label and an input box. In enterprise software applications, an input field can be bound to an attribute in a business object. In addition, functional icons or buttons are usually attached in close relation to an input field in order to launch, for example, search help or additional applications in support of facilitating data population to the input field.
Typically, when building new enterprise software applications, there is a need for flexible customizable solutions for handling input fields to support form-based enterprise software applications. A need exists for a solution that allows input fields in form-based enterprise software applications to keep up with changing business requirements. In different object contexts, given authorization and user interaction scenarios, there is often a need, for example, of altering field labels, hiding certain fields, marking mandatory fields, rendering value helps automatically, attaching functional buttons based on an application at run time, and so forth.
Manually building up business services and property services for each input field can be a time-intensive activity. It is desirable to have an overall synergism where all of the services of input fields can be enabled to exhibit behavior based properties defined for business attributes. This exhibited behavior needs to allow forms to invoke business services without requiring time and labor intensive software coding.